Last year, the Carlsbad High basketball team won the CIF Open Division Championship as well as their league championship. The Lancers dominated over opponents going 30-3 in league. Even with the loss of last year’s seniors, they still plan to make this season just as successful.
This season’s basketball tryouts took place from November 9th through 11th. The team advertised tryouts on social media platforms such as Instagram and X. Junior Briggs Young is a second year varsity player and expresses his ambitions for the upcoming season.
“Our plan is to win Open Division and win League,” Young said. “Open Division is the main goal.”
As the basketball season quickly approaches, the Lancers are working towards developing dominant players to help fill the lost seniors roles. Last season’s victories are helping to drive the team to continue to be successful this year.
“We lost 8 or 9 seniors and they were a huge part of the team,” Young said. “I know our team last year won the championship, but we have a really good team this year and a lot of juniors and upcoming guys that are talented so I think that we will be good again.”
Young is not the only one who noticed this loss. However, remaining varsity members from last season notice the new and upcoming talent. Jake Hall is a senior varsity member this year and he will take his talents to UC San Diego in the fall of next year to play Division 1 basketball.
“We definitely lost a few key pieces,” Hall said. “But I’ve seen a bunch of underclassmen and sophomores that are going to help us out a lot.”
With the loss of the seniors, the team is left with big shoes to fill. The upcoming players from junior varsity last year have been working hard to improve their skills and prepare for the higher competition of the varsity level.
“Coming out and being confident, just trying to get up to their standards and be good,” Young said. “We have a couple seniors starting still but the new players will still play strong and confident this year.”
The team spends lots of time together, which helps to build comradery and a solid dynamic between the players and coaching staff. The team works on defensive and offensive drills as well as working on game plays to help prepare them for this upcoming season.
“We start off with drills, we do one-on-one and then we get straight into scrimmaging each other, working on our defense,” said Young. “We have basketball PE, we do weight room and lift during that time and then in practice we do lots of drills and then we go into game situations.”
This year’s team is looking forward to developing their new and upcoming players. They believe there is no doubt that they can have the same success as last season.
“[We’re] doing what we’re doing and what we’ve been doing,” Hall said. “I think that we got the right pieces and this year I think it’s definitely a reachable goal to win CIF and another league championship [again].”
